The Weight
by mooyoo
Summary: He’s told himself before that he’d never do this, never take this last step, but his life, his mind, are spinning so wildly out of his grasp and this is all he has left now.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Weight  
**Fandom:** Prison Break  
**Characters:** Michael, Lincoln  
**Prompt:** 011: Red  
**Word Count:** 2,232  
**Rating:** I'm going to go with an R. This one's on the dark side, and a little bloody.  
**Summary:** He's told himself before that he'd never do this, never take this last step, but his life, his mind, are spinning so wildly out of his grasp and this is all he has left now.

**Disclaimer:** Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own _Prison Break_.

The first drop crawls slowly around his wrist and then falls to the pool of water in the sink below, hitting the surface and exploding into a tiny bullet of red streaking downward. Michael watches the one drop expand and spread, tinting the clear water a faint pink as his blood mixes with it. Another red drop soon follows the first, then several more as the blood begins to flow more heavily, and Michael sighs in contentment as he feels a familiar, comforting pain slice through him.

He watches each drop hit the water, _plip plip plip_, and thinks how easy this really is, how lovely it feels to be in control of himself, completely in control for the first time in what seems like forever. He's told himself before that he'd never do this, never take this last step, but his life, his mind, are spinning so wildly out of his grasp and this is all he has left now.

The faucet in the bathtub behind him has been leaking for weeks, and he's been listening to it for weeks, trying to figure out which pipe has eroded and how to fix it. The gentle _drip drip drip_ is starting to sound monstrous now and he's desperate to stop listening to it, so he tries to dull the noise with the pain in his wrist and hopes everything will stop soon, because this is just too much.

There's still a bit of shaving cream left around his jaw that he hasn't gotten to – he can feel it pressing against his face, weighing him down, and he wants it gone, but everything will be gone in a few minutes anyway, so he doesn't bother to wipe it away. He just concentrates on the pain that shoots up his arm originating from the sharp feeling in his wrist.

He fingers the small blade that he took apart his razor to get and tries to stop looking at how deeply red the water is becoming. There are swirls of crimson scattered throughout the sink and he doesn't want to think about how they connect to make a pattern that looks like a red dinosaur amidst the pink water, or how the white porcelain is going to be permanently stained.

He brings the blade to his wrist again as the sights and the _drip drip drip_ of the bathtub's faucet start to cloud his head, wants only to make them go away, and sighs again as the blade presses into his skin.

"What're you doing?" asks a shocked voice next to him.

"What's it look like?" he mumbles back without looking up from his wrist.

"Excuse me?"

Michael looks up at his mother standing next to him, a stunned look on her face, mouth open.

"Don't you talk to me that way!" she lectures him and he looks away, ashamed.

"'m sorry," he replies softly and lowers his head, letting his too-long hair fall into his eyes. He's always preferred his hair short but lately has been unmotivated to do much of anything with it and allowed it to grow out long enough to flop over his brow and get caught in his eyelashes. He's found lately that he appreciates the protective curtain it gives him sometimes.

"Why would you do this to yourself?" his mother asks softly and he shakes his head, eyes still downcast.

"I don't know," he tells her half-heartedly.

"Yes you do," she chides him and he raises his head to look off to her left at a patch of peeling paint on the wall, not meeting her eyes.

"I'm going crazy," he says in a cracking whisper. "You keep showing up, but you shouldn't be here, and I'm loosing it."

"You're trying to _kill_ yourself," she says and Michael bites his lip, feeling terribly guilty even though she's not real. "And you've never even told anyone about this, about how you're feeling, have you?"

"I can't. I should be able to… deal with this. But there's something wrong with me. And it's not going away, it's just getting worse. You're not real, I know that, but I keep seeing you."

He feels disgustingly weak, but he can't stop his voice from shaking. Tears find their way to his eyes, along with a heavy feeling in his chest that he's felt before and is so tired of having. He's tired of everything now and wants so much for it to be gone.

"But – but you don't have to hurt yourself like this, you – "

"Stop, _please_," Michael hisses, turning away from her and examining the gash on his wrist, eyes tracing over the angry red edges of his skin splitting apart and watches the steady flow of blood that seeps out, splitting off into a trail down his arm to the elbow and onto the floor, and a trickle off of his wrist into the sink.

"Listen to the kid," a new voice pipes up from Michael's other side. Michael doesn't have to look to know that his father is sitting on the closed toilet seat next to him, arms probably folded across his chest and leaning back against the wall casually. "He wants to off himself, let 'im do it."

Michael sighs again and leans forward, bracing his uninjured hand against the rim of the sink as his chest tightens painfully. He's never even seen a photograph of his father so he has no idea why his brain conjures up the images of him that it does – a burly man with dark hair, tanned skin, and sharp eyes, an amalgam of himself and his brother.

But there he is, showing up more and more frequently lately with his mother, providing an antagonistic tone to war with his mother's soothing one. Michael is scared every time either one of them show up circling around and speaking to him as if there's nothing unusual about hearing from the mother who died almost five years ago and the father he's never even met.

"Don't tell him that!" Michael's mother says sharply. Then to her son she says, "You're just not thinking this through, you need to stop."

Michael can't think of how to reply for a few minutes, then finally says, "doesn't matter," and brings the blade to scrape again across his wrist, grunting with the lovely pain that comes with the cut and soothes the panic in his chest.

"Michael," she says in a warning tone, but she doesn't touch him – she never touches him, and for some reason that makes his heart hurt a little bit more.

"What'd I just say?" his father speaks up again with a bark. "Stop trying to talk him out of it, better for everyone if he's gone. Definitely a step up for him."

"Yeah," Michael whispers, dropping his hands, blood streaking down his newly washed pants, and turns to look at his father, wondering how a hallucination can be so perceptive.

"That's not true," his mother pleads, shifting to try and catch Michael's eye. "What about your brother? He needs you."

"No he doesn't," his father snorts, and Michael shifts uncomfortably between them, starting to feel a little dizzy from the argument and the slow escaping of his blood.

"What's he need Mike for? He's got a family, his own kid – no time for this one, and Linc's always been the better of the two of them anyway. Why d'you think I left? Think I wanted _him_ for a son?" He gestures to Michael with a sideways jerk of his thumb and Michael tightens the hand of his injured arm into a fist.

"You don't know what you're talking about, you don't know either of them," Michael's mother shoots back.

Michael takes a breath and then slams his fist into the mirror, breaking it into a dozen pieces of varying sizes that end up scattered throughout the bathroom. His fist looks similar now to his wrist, blood seeping from several gashes around his hand, and he rips his eyes away from his hand to look at what he's done to the mirror. There are several chunks of glass still left intact within the mirror's frame, and two pieces just barely holding on, swaying back and forth slightly as they dangle.

Michael breathes and his parents continue on as if nothing happened.

"Yeah, and you do?" his father replies to his mother. "You've been gone for years, they're forgetting all about _you_. Mike here's loosing his marbles, what's he got left to look forward to anyway? A straightjacket in the loony-bin? Better off getting the job done now, act like a man for once."

"He could talk to someone, see a therapist, get someone to help him."

Michael's father laughs at this. "Maybe, if he were a girl. And what'd that do, anyway? The boy's cracking up, nothing anyone can do now to put his head back together."

Michael's chest is tightening again, it's starting to feel hard to breathe, and the _drip drip drip_ of the faucet is getting even louder, thundering in his ears and through his head and he can't figure out how to stop it. He moves to slash at his wrist again when his mother turns back to him.

"Michael, you don't need to do this. It'll be okay, I promise."

"Please don't promise me that," he asks her quietly, and then his father juts in again.

"Christ, will you leave the damn kid alone? What a goddamn nag, always have been."

"_Please_," Michael whispers, closing his eyes and leaning his head against a piece of the mirror hanging that's still vaguely intact. The cool glass feels briefly wonderful before he starts thinking about the tiles carpeting the floor and tries to remember exactly how many there are, how many are black, how many are white, whether the two numbers are equal, and then he forces himself back to his bickering parents.

"Please stop, please. Why can't you leave me alone?"

"Hey, you need us, Mike," his father replies flippantly. "You'd probably punk out otherwise."

Michael shakes his head slowly against the glass as tears begin to slip out from under his closed eyelids. "I don't understand why this is happening, I don't understand."

"You're perfectly fine just the way you are, Michael," his mother tells him evenly, using the same tone she did when she used to tell him _just ignore the bullies and they'll leave you alone_.

"No, I'm not," he replies sadly and lifts his head. It feels heavy for some reason, like the rest of his body, really, and hard to hold up. He settles for letting it loll slightly to one side, eyes moving slowly around the room as he speaks. "I'm going crazy. It's getting worse, nothing stops it anymore, everything's – everything's always there, always in my head, always, I can't stop, can't relax, can't stop being scared and… and frantic, all the time I'm just… I don't want to do this anymore."

"Do what, honey?"

"Live."

No one speaks for a few minutes, during which the _drip drip drip_ is horrifyingly deafening until finally his mother begins, "No, baby – "

"Christ, would you shut it?" Michael's father interrupts again with a bark to his mother and she looks momentarily taken aback. "Just do it, Mike, stop dicking around and get it done."

"Why, why would you say something like that to your own son?" Michael's mother asks, sounding fierce.

"Because he's worthless, weak. This is the only thing he can do for himself."

"No," she says again, and turns from Michael to his father and back again. "Michael, no, please, you're not. Just stop and talk to someone, you can – "

Michael stops her with a shake of his head and closes his eyes. "There's no one." He's starting to feel dizzy, and thinks that it seems too early for this, he hasn't even hit the vein yet in his wrist, but it's getting harder to stay upright, so he sinks down to sit on the cold floor and leans back against the bathtub.

His father leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, and speaks in a low voice. "He's a blemish."

At that Michael finishes off the skin at his wrist, slashing the tiny blade horizontally around so that the flesh is quickly ripped apart fully and the blood and can sluice freely down his arm to drench the clean tiles. Sixty-five white and eighty-two black, they don't connect in any discernable pattern and it's always so damn distracting. Why would someone lay tiles in such disarray, Michael always wonders, and his mind pours over this once again as he has to lay himself down on the floor, nearly all of his strength gone now.

But it'll stop soon. He won't have to think about where the broken pieces of the mirror are in a few more minutes, how close they are to his cheek, his arm, his foot, and what other damage they could do to him if he happened to roll over or shift one of his legs just a bit to the right.

His parents are blissfully silent now, and Michael's chest feels just a little bit lighter with them gone. But he thinks he can hear Lincoln's voice, he's not sure whether or not it's real, and he's just a little bit frightened as he slips out of awareness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:**   
**Fandom:** Prison Break  
**Characters:** Michael, Lincoln  
**Prompt:** 019: White.  
**Word Count:** 3,423  
**Rating:** PG13/R  
**Summary:** Hours later Michael is mildly patched up and heavily sedated, and Lincoln is mildly angry and heavily anxious.

**A/N:** Part 2 of 2.

**Disclaimer:** Paul Scheuring and a whole lot of other people who aren't me own _Prison Break_.

"Michael! God, Michael – "

Lincoln stands frozen in front of the bathroom doorway for a split-second, unable to cross the threshold as he stares down at the streams of red and broken glass surrounding his brother on the floor in front of him. His mouth hangs open and he can't process what he's seeing - and then he's on the floor next to Michael, blood soaking quickly through the knees of his pants.

"Fuck, Michael, goddamnit."

Lincoln grabs onto his brother's arms, trying to see where the blood is coming from and surveying the cuts on his hand briefly before clamping his own hand down over Michael's wrist. He glances up at the broken mirror, then back down at his brother stirring slightly on the floor, eyes still closed, and wonders if Michael broke it himself.

Lincoln is trying to pull himself and Michael up to get to a phone when he spots the small razorblade lying in a shallow pool of blood next to Michael's foot and his stomach drops violently. He eyes it for a moment as his mind clicks and he feels a disgusting cold in his chest, suddenly much more afraid than he was a moment ago.

"Shit – _shit_jesuschrist Michael, what did you do?"

Lincoln's mind jumps to a dozen different places – _I don't understand-what the hell happened-I need and ambulance-there's a phone in another room-if I let go of his arm to get the phone he'll start bleeding harder-I need help, **fuck**-I need the phone_ – before he finally abandons his hold on Michael's wrist with a sick twist to his stomach and peels out of the bathroom to find a phone.

He's back in less than two minutes, ambulance on the way, and grabs the razorblade from the floor to stuff into his jacket pocket before pulling Michael's limp form up to rest against his chest, hand clamping down on his brother's wrist once again to prevent more blood from escaping.

Lincoln holds Michael close against him, wraps an arm around his brother's chest, and he hasn't cried in years, can't even remember the last time, but he almost looses himself when he feels a faint _thump_ against his hand coming from Michael's slow heartbeat.

He keeps Michael pressed against him, Lincoln's chest plastered to his brother's back and sealed with the still-warm blood Michael had been lying in a few minutes before. Michael stirs every so often, rolling his head around a bit and flexing his fingers gently, and Lincoln's calmed slightly with the thought that his brother is still holding on slightly, that maybe he hasn't completely given up yet.

"It's okay, it's okay, Michael," Lincoln mumbles into his brother's ear, not sure if Michael can hear him but unable to sit still and stay quiet while Michael's blood is soaking through his shirt. "I'm right here, I've got you. I've got you."

Lincoln focuses on Michael's heart beating steadily against his hand and feels foolish anger bubble up, burning his throat as he glances again at the red dashed over the black and white floor. and tries to think of what else to do. The fury is more recognizable than the fright and he keeps it close, arm firming around Michael's chest to feel that slow beating a little better.

"Please jus' lemme alone," Michael breathes through his semi-consciousness, head shifting slightly to the side.

"Fuck you, man," Lincoln bites back, furious at his brother's words, and presses Michael tighter against his chest. "I'm not going anywhere, I'm not letting you go, you goddamn selfish piece of shit. Don't you ever ask me something like that, you hear me Michael?"

He pauses when Michael stops moving in his arms and leans around to move his mouth closer to Michael's ear.

"Michael? Come on, come on, you're not going to do this to me. I'm not letting you go, I'm _not_."

It feels like an agonizingly long time before the paramedics finally arrive, during which Lincoln thinks his heart may have stopped beating because his brother is dying and he doesn't know how to stop it. His eyelids are squeezed shut so tightly that he can see stars behind them and numbness begins to seep up his arms, starting from the fingertips pressed against Michael's bloody wrist.

He holds in a breath for a full minute and the only sound filling the room is the _drip drip drip_ of the stupid broken bathtub faucet.

He suddenly hears the distant sound of sirens and finally lets his breath out when two paramedics appear in the bathroom, crowding the small space and crouching down next to him while trying to navigate the blood and broken glass.

"What happened?" one of them asks Lincoln as they pry Michael away from him and Lincoln doesn't hesitate in answering.

"The mirror broke, he was cleaning it up and cut himself on some of the glass."

Both paramedics nod without looking up at him and Lincoln is loathe to move away from his brother, but he knows that he's in the way so he shuffles backwards awkwardly and puts two bloodied hands on top of his head while he watches the paramedics roll Michael onto a stretcher.

The ride to the hospital is mostly silent to Lincoln, though he's aware of the paramedics speaking to each other the whole way. He holds onto Michael's hand and watches the color drain from his brother's very still face and doesn't think about anything except how hard he can grip Michael's hand without hurting him.

-

Hours later Michael is mildly patched up and heavily sedated, and Lincoln is mildly angry and heavily anxious. The doctors have said that Michael should be asleep for a good while but he will wake up, and when he does he'll be okay. Lincoln's not sure how true that is.

Lincoln sits in half a dozen spots around the tiny room and gives murderous looks to anyone who dares to ask him to leave until the nurses all give up and offer him a blanket which he leaves folded up for an hour and then spreads over Michael when the hospital's air-conditioning gets too high.

Time crawls by and Lincoln moves from the chair next to Michael's bed to the windowsill to leaning against the door and then back to the chair. He watches Michael sleep and tries to figure out when his brother got so thin. Lying in this hospital bed, small frame being swallow by white sheets and rigid pillows, he looks like a child for the first time in years, and Lincoln goes over everything he can remember of the past few months trying to pinpoint when Michael started to dissolve into this small kid that he is now, almost a stranger to Lincoln.

And he hates, _hates_ that after knowing Michael for a lifetime, after far too many years of it being just the two of them together, when he should understand his brother inside and out it took _this_ to make Lincoln realize that Michael has been slipping away for months now and he's barely noticed.

His thoughts pass briefly over what would have happened if he hadn't found Michael when he did, the idea bringing with it a sickness he hasn't felt since his mother's death, but he doesn't spend much time on it – because he did find Michael, and the dying stops right here, right now. Michael's been in trouble for months, maybe more, and Lincoln's missed it, but he's determined to get him out of it, even if he's not sure just how to go about that yet.

Lincoln shoos Lisa away when she comes to sit with him, well aware of the hurt that crosses her face as she leaves him alone. He argues briefly and intensely with Michael's foster parents, trying to turn his own anger and guilt around and place it with them, and they spend the rest of the night in the waiting room down the hall. Lincoln's glad of it, knows that they don't deserve to be in here with his brother, just as responsible for letting Michael slip away as he is.

It's 2:16am when Michael shifts around and slowly blinks his eyes open, almost eleven hours since Lincoln found him on the bathroom floor. He takes a few deep breaths in and looks around the room hesitantly before his eyes settle on Lincoln and he seems to realize where he is.

"Hey," Michael says quietly, voice rough.

"Hey," Lincoln replies, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together in front of him.

They stare at each other for a while before Lincoln asks in a quietly demanding voice, "You know what, uh, what happened?"

Michael nods carefully and looks away from Lincoln to the bandage wrapped tightly around his wrist.

Lincoln sighs and squeezes his hands together. "I don't really know what to say."

"Me neither," Michael replies softly. He looks back up at Lincoln and the two stare at each other again for a long time without speaking. Lincoln considers how easy it would be to just leave it at this, but he can't shake the feeling that they'll just end up right back here. Or worse.

He swallows hard.

"If anyone asks," he tells Michael seriously. "The mirror broke and you accidentally cut yourself when you tried to clean it up."

Michael's eyebrows knit together as he asks, "What? Why?"

"That's what I told the paramedics, the doctors."

Michael blinks, looking like he still doesn't quite understand.

"Michael, this kind of thing'd follow you the rest of your life. I don't want it going on some… I don't know, medical record or something. Plus… well if they knew they'd probably – probably take you away somewhere."

Michael looks like he might be touched, but the expression dissolves into anguish as his head turns away from Lincoln again. He stares up at the ceiling and chews on the corner of his mouth.

"Maybe they should," he says and Lincoln shakes his head furiously.

"No. No. You think I'd just let them take you off to some strange place, lock you away all alone? I mean maybe those places, those hospitals, they're probably good for some people. Not for you."

Michael shakes his head and closes his eyes, fists the sheets on his bed with his uninjured hand. "Lincoln… there's something wrong with me."

Lincoln nods even though Michael can't see the motion and cracks his knuckles nervously, terrified of this conversation.

"Yeah, I kinda figured. What, um – how long've you been feeling like this?"

"Little while," Michael says carefully. "I don't really know how to explain it."

"Well you better try," Lincoln tells him sternly, trying not to yell.

Michael opens his eyes again but keeps them starting straight up at the ceiling. Lincoln glances up to see what's so fascinating up there but finds nothing more than a random pattern of black pin dots scattered throughout white paint. He looks back down at Michael, who's eyes have welled up in just a few seconds, and Lincoln is now even more terrified of their conversation, but he needs to understand.

"It's – I don't know," Michael begins hesitantly. He shakes his head a little as he speaks slowly, testing the words carefully. "I used to be able to just look at something or listen to something and it was nothing, normal. And then slowly it started – everything's different, I can't stop… noticing things."

Lincoln can feel the deep lines that form in his forehead as he mulls this over. "I don't really understand what you're saying."

"I don't either," Michael says, shaking his head with a sad smile that makes Lincoln's chest hurt. "I think I'm loosing my mind. The last few weeks, things – people just appear, out of nowhere. I know I shouldn't be seeing them or hearing them, but they're right there talking to me. I mean, that's crazy, right? That sounds… insane."

"Well, um," Lincoln swallows, not wanting to agree but finding it hard not to. He evades the question and changes the subject instead. "This isn't the first time you've done this – tried to, uh…"

"What?" Michael turns to look at him, a confused expression furrowing his brow.

Lincoln sighs and pulls his chair forward until he's right next to Michael's bed and pulls back the blankets. He lifts up the edge of Michael's hospital gown to reveal several gashes, older and healing, across his leg. Michael moves quickly to yank the fabric from Lincoln's hand and smoothes it back into place, covering himself up with the blankets once more.

"The doctors asked me about those," Lincoln explains. "I've never even – I didn't know."

"That's not the same."

"Don't lie to me, Michael," Lincoln huffs angrily. "You've tried this before."

"No, I haven't. That's not – when things are feeling – when I'm overwhelmed with stuff, it's like it's this one thing that I can focus on instead of having to focus on twenty or thirty things. It feels better when I'm hurting."

Lincoln leans his knees on his elbows again and heaves a broken sigh as he puts his head onto his hands. "What is going on with you, Michael? Why haven't you told me about this? Or anyone else? Why'd you – I mean, this…"

"I don't know why. I didn't plan on doing it, it just – I was just shaving and listening to the faucet in the bathtub drip and it wouldn't stop. It never stops, no matter how hard you turn the handle, it won't _stop_, and I couldn't listen to it anymore. I can't stand it."

"The _faucet_?" Lincoln asks incredulously, head popping up to look at his brother in the eye, a little furious again that Michael would destroy his life and Lincoln's over a stupid broken piece of plumbing.

"Everything – it's everything, I can't take listening to everything, seeing everything, not being able to shut things out."

"You could've come to me," Lincoln says again and Michael shakes his head, turning to look out the window on the other side of his bed.

"You can't do anything. You can't stop it."

The words sound almost foreign to Lincoln, especially coming from Michael's mouth, and again he wonders who this person is lying here before him.

"So that's it then, you just gave up? What'd you think, that I'd… get mad at you or something for being sick?" Lincoln can't keep the anger out of his voice now, hard as he's trying to keep himself calm and not upset his brother.

"You have a baby now, and a wife. You don't live with us anymore, you've got your own life now. You can't keep worrying about me and taking care of me."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" The words burst out of Lincoln before he can rein them back in, fury burning its way through him so intensely it makes him shake. "Do you have any idea what it'd do to me if something happened to you?"

Michael swallows and lifts his good hand to rub his forehead, and when he speaks again it's in the small voice of a boy who knows he's done something wrong.

"I'm sorry."

Lincoln spots tears again at the corner of his brother's eyes and takes a deep breath, trying again to calm down, fists opening and closing a few times.

"Don't be sorry," he tells Michael quietly. "I'm not mad, I'm – you just scared me." He pauses for a moment and looks away quickly, a little embarrassed at what he's just said. "Christ, I sound like Mom," he says under his breath, mostly to himself, but Michael snorts softly at this, and Lincoln's almost glad for the brief, random moment of levity.

"I see her sometimes," Michael says softly after a few minutes of silence.

"What do you mean 'see her'?"

"She just sometimes… I'll be sitting in school or at home or walking down the street and suddenly she's just there next to me, talking to me like it's nothing. And I know it's impossible, but she's _there_."

Lincoln has no idea what to say to this, but nods slowly as if he understands, even though he doesn't at all.

"I looked it up – hallucinations and stuff," Michael tells him and struggles to sit himself up. Lincoln reaches foreword to help him stuff a pillow behind his back. When Michael's settled back, sitting up with his injured arm off to his side and his good one laying in his lap, he continues speaking, eyes staring straight out in front of him.

"It's a symptom of a few mental illnesses, like schizophrenia."

"Isn't that the one with multiple personalities?" Lincoln asks.

"Not really, not from what I've read, that's something else. This one is… a defect in the perception of reality," Michael explains, sounding like he's reading straight from a book, and Lincoln wonders, not for the first time, at his ability to remember such random facts he reads. At the moment he wishes Michael didn't have such an ability.

Lincoln again is unsure of how to move the conversation foreword, again afraid to hear this from his brother and terrified of the implications, wondering for the first time if he really can do anything to help Michael.

"You know what 'schizophrenia' means?" Michael asks softly after a minute, and Lincoln's sure that he doesn't want to know.

"Michael…"

"I looked it up, it's Greek," Michael barrels on, the sad smile returning to his face. "It means 'shattered mind.'"

Michael laughs a little and then coughs and swallows and sniffs back the tears that are threatening to fall. Lincoln shakes his head, annoyed that his brother does this kind of research, especially when he's never even talked to a doctor about it.

"Michael," Lincoln says again, but Michael swallows again and continues to look out ahead of him.

"I'm really scared," he says in a tiny voice, and he looks every bit as frightened as he claims to be. "I don't want to loose my mind."

"You're not," Lincoln tells him firmly, and finally Michael turns to look back at him. "You're not, Michael, we're going to get you help. You're going to get better. I mean, you read up on this stuff, right? Books must've said something about doctors, treatment, how to fix it."

Michael chews on his lip again and swallows hard against his tears. "I don't know how – I can't stop it, everything always all around me, surrounding me. It's like everything's crushing me… like I'm drowning and there's nothing to hold onto."

Lincoln's chest tightens painfully and he wants to hold onto Michael but his closest hand is damaged and wrapped up, so he grabs onto Michael's shin through the thin blankets and squeezes hard.

"You're not going to drown. I won't let you."

Michael swallows again, his jaw twitching, and Lincoln can tell that he's trying so hard to hold himself together, and it hurts to watch. He knows that he can't do much for his brother except this, hold onto him and give him something to hold onto.

After a few minutes Michael sinks a little further back into the pillows and Lincoln tells him, "You should try to go back to sleep for a while."

"Are you gonna stay here?" Michael asks tentatively, eyes darting away from Lincoln for just a moment.

"Yeah, I'll stay right here," Lincoln replies quietly and moves his chair a few inches so that he's next to Michael's head.

Michael nods, looking grateful, and shuffles carefully down in the bed so that he's lying down once more. His eyelids droop closed quickly, making Lincoln wonder just how exhausted he is even after sleeping for eleven hours. He thinks about this for only a few more minutes before his own eyes fall shut against his will and he slumps down a bit in his seat, head resting on his chin.

He dreams of standing out on a beach with Michael, sand blowing around them in a storm. He holds onto Michael's hand tightly amidst the clouds of swirling granules that grow and attack them and threaten to swallow them up, and at some point he looses his grip on his brother. Soon he can't even see his brother anymore through the thick of the sand and dust surrounding them, and when he looks at the hand that had been holding Michael's, it's covered in blood. He doesn't remember the dream when he wakes up later.

**-end-**


End file.
